Chicago's gang wars and the Judicial Accountability Act

Family members of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes speak to members of the media outside Comer Children's Hospital after Takiya died Tuesday morning, Feb. 14, 2017, in Chicago. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Family members of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes speak to members of the media outside Comer Children's Hospital after Takiya died Tuesday morning, Feb. 14, 2017, in Chicago. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Two little girls were shot in the head in Chicago, two more innocents swept up by the city's unending river of street gang violence.

And as I write this, reports are of a 2-year-old boy fatally shot on the West Side.

Of the two South Side girls shot in the head Saturday night in separate attacks, one clings faintly to life in a hospital. The other is dead.

And now comes that tired, familiar cry from a city numbed by pain:

When will it stop?

It doesn't stop.

Takiya Holmes, 11, died in her mother's arms in the hospital on Tuesday. Kanari Gentry-Bowers, 12, is unresponsive, on life support.

If one thing is certain, Chicago will take notice, become officially angry, the politicians will say what politicians say, and then Chicago will forget their names, just as Chicago has forgotten the names of other children swept away in that river of violence.

Antonio Smith was forgotten, and Ryan Banks was forgotten, and the list of the city's murdered children continues, with few but their families and detectives and their teachers remembering them.

Chicago doesn't need more public handwringing or torchlight demonstrations for TV cameras, no more angry frustrations from the mouths of clergy.

And the city doesn't need finger wagging from those who've never walked a crime scene, who demand that neighbors turn in the shooters, which will just make targets of their own children. All of that is just empty talk.

What's required are concrete steps to take the shooters off the streets.

Most of the shooting is done by those who've shot before, violent felons who carry guns because they're worried about other violent felons carrying guns. They don't worry about going to prison for illegally carrying a gun, because most do only a year or so behind bars and come out, spry, just as nihilistic as before, ready to shoot again and again.

Solutions need names, too. So I'll give this one a name:

The Judicial Accountability Act.

That's what I've decided to call legislation that is taking too long to form in Springfield, hampered by the jealousies of Chicago politics and by some in what's called the Black Caucus.

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has been pushing this idea for months now. He's made himself physically ill pushing it.

Its aim is to lengthen sentences for felons already previously convicted of unlawful use of weapons charges.

If judges decide to show mercy to convicted felons who illegally carry guns, the judges will be required to put their reasons in writing. If judicial mercy leads to some future murder, the judges will wear the jacket for it.

Judges hate it. But worrying about the feelings of judges, and there are many good judges, isn't what's important here.

What's important is getting as many shooters off the streets as quickly as possible.

And that's why I call it the Judicial Accountability Act.

State Sen. Kwame Raoul, the liberal Chicago Democrat, is helping form this policy. He expects to have some hard language introduced in Springfield next week, he told me on Tuesday.

House Speaker Michael Madigan, the political boss of bosses, would support it, but not unless the Black Caucus is supportive. Not all are on board, and there is no real pressure being applied to them.

Also, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle isn't in favor of it, and her political protege, Cook County State's Attorney Kimberly Foxx, isn't loudly pushing the idea. Foxx was elected in the aftermath of the Laquan McDonald fiasco, and she didn't campaign as a law-and-order candidate.

Preckwinkle sees weakness in the mayor, since his disastrous handling of the McDonald case, and isn't inclined to help him.

This leaves Raoul to walk carefully, between black elected officials who don't want to be identified with get-tough-on-crime politics, and the reality of the little girls getting shot in the head.

One political way out from the impasse is to reduce some drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors as a way of buying support for tougher gun sentencing.

"What I hear from detractors, it's that, 'Well, these individuals are just carrying, they haven't shot anybody yet,'" Raoul told me. "My response is that we shouldn't have to wait until they've shot someone.

"If they've been previously convicted, we know they have the propensity to shoot again," Raoul said. "We have to get them off the streets, away from the community. To remove them so they may be rehabilitated, possibly, but also to remove them from the community to protect the community. And it's frustrating."